Irrefutable (The Apprehensive Duet Book 2) (42 page)

Editor: Devon Burke

Cover Design: Kari Ayasha

ISBN-13: 978-0-9861738-2-0

EVER WISH THAT you could have a do-over? That's how the last six months of my life have made me feel, and this shitty morning just sums it all up for me. Why can't I seem to catch a break? What did I do in my previous lives to warrant such a terrible string of bad luck? Have I upset the cosmos so much that my karma is irreparable now? I'm just your normal, run-of-the-mill girl who wants to follow her dreams. That seems reasonable enough, no? So then why, on the morning of my potential big break, am I running late?

Of all mornings for me to be running behind schedule and stuck in traffic, it had to be this one. Ugh, fuck me! I'm sitting in the car, sweating my ass off because the air conditioning in my 1999 Honda Civic has decided that this is the summer it will stop working. Of course, this also happens to be the same summer that New Jersey is having a never-ending heat wave. It’s already over ninety degrees, and it’s not even ten o'clock in the morning. I feel my face starting to grease up as the sun bakes it. Having the windows down doesn’t help if the car isn’t moving fast enough to create a breeze. My hair is sticking to the sides of my face. I’m going to look fantastic when I finally get to the interview.

I overslept this morning because I was up all night prepping for today, for this interview with Tanner Garrison, quarterback for the New York Jets. This is supposed to be their big year, thanks to the luck of the draft. After trading up for a higher draft pick, the Jets were able to get some up-and-coming hotshot wide receiver who’s supposed to help fix their offense's lack of good ball handlers. I didn’t want to do this interview at first.

James Carter is the paper's usual sportswriter, but his wife went into labor three days ago and had their first baby, so I was picked to take his place. I know nothing about sports, but our editor, Dominick Cranmer, said that I was the best choice on such short notice. Yes, I’m a good writer—but not a sports writer.

"Ashley, you’re the most qualified of the available choices," Dom said to me yesterday after he dropped the bomb. "This is a big interview, and Garrison's agent finally agreed to it but said that tomorrow is the only time slot they can offer. They aren't really granting interviews to discuss this season's hype around them and Garrison. Besides, you’re always complaining about not getting your chance to write a big piece, so here's your chance." He seemed to sense my reluctance. My face must have said everything that was running through my mind.

"But, Dom, I'm not a sports writer. I don't know anything about football. I write lifestyle pieces: hot clubs, great restaurants, newest trends, concerts, plays, anything hot at the moment—not sports! Sure, I know of him and where he likes to hang out, but I know crap about his professional life. Can't James do a phone interview? He won’t have to leave home for that," I offered up as a reasonable alternative.

"No, Ashley. He can't. His wife will be discharged from the hospital sometime tomorrow with the baby. There’s no dependable timetable for that," Dom stated matter-of-factly. "I'll give you the rest of the day off. Go home. Do some googling on Garrison and the Jets. I'll have someone email you James’ notes and outline for the interview. Later, you and James can sit down together and put together a good article. Make sure everything fits for a sports piece since you aren’t used to them.” I knew he was trying to be generous with the timeline, and it would have been an adequate amount of time to prepare for an interview, if it were in my given area of expertise. This is not my area of expertise.

Knowing this is actually a great opportunity, I should have been ecstatic. The excitement around the Jets potential this year has been buzzing for months. I had $96.24 in my bank account, and if this panned out well, it could mean a great paycheck. Dom had said that the team and Garrison aren't doing very many interviews. I sighed internally because I knew that I couldn't turn this assignment down, and I nodded in agreement with Dom. I was standing to leave when Dom gave me a few words of encouragement.

"Ash," he said, "you're going to be fine with this assignment. You’re qualified for this. If you can handle the snobby, up-and-coming wannabes that come to party in the clubs, you can certainly handle Tanner Garrison. If I didn't think that you could do this, I wouldn't have assigned it to you."

After I’d grabbed my purse and laptop, I headed out of the office.

I’ve worked at The City Press for three years now. I write for the Lifestyle section of the paper; what club was packed this week, what new celebs were partying it up in NYC, which restaurant has a month-long waiting list or what is currently trending—those are the topics that I mostly cover. Nothing big, but decent enough. I’m doing what I love and what I’ve always wanted to do. My parents have never really approved of my career choice though, especially my mother. She insists that, while there’s nothing wrong with writing articles for The Press, I should go into something more stable and steady. "Why not be a teacher?" My mom said once. "You'd make a great teacher, Ashley." But I’ve never wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be a writer.

I’d always wanted to be a writer. I’d interned at The Press during college and worked hard enough that afterward, I had been chosen as the only intern to be hired. Dom has always liked me, right from the very beginning, which is why I felt as though he’d given me this chance. It isn’t that I’m not grateful for the opportunity, but I hate being outside of my comfort zone. I feel as though I haven’t been in my comfort zone for the last six months, and it’s been a long six months.

My bad luck first started six months ago, when I discovered my boyfriend, Jason, had been cheating on me. I suppose if you asked my mother, though, she’d say my bad luck had started two and half years ago, when I started dating Jason. My parents never liked him.

"He just rubs me the wrong way, Ashley," my mother had always said. "He's not the guy for you." She’d claimed that it wasn't one thing in particular but that something about Jason as a whole just didn’t sit right with her. Either way, she was right. I guess mother's intuition really is accurate… But I’ve never told her the real reasons we broke up or how much debt he put me in before we did. Let’s just say I don’t want to see the look on her face if she found out the truth about Jason. She’d say that since she’d been right about my choice in him, maybe I should consider another career before it turned out she was right about that as well.

Jason and I had shared an apartment in Jersey City. That is, until I’d found him having an afternoon romp in our sheets with someone who certainly wasn’t me on a Thursday when he should have been working, and I kicked him out.

I’d come home early that day to grab a few outfit choices to bring with me to my best friend, Quinn's. We were heading to the city that night so I could check out a hit club for the weekend edition of the paper. I’d known that something was off the minute I walked through the door. A pair of women's shoes lay on the living room floor. They were not mine. I didn’t own electric blue stilettoes.

Then I heard them.

"Yes! Yes, Jason! Harder!" The unknown woman somewhere in my apartment yelled. Her moans, pants, and screams of pleasure filled the empty space, echoing around me.

"Yeah, you like that? You like it, don't you?" I’d heard Jason respond.

I walked toward the bedroom. I’m still not sure why. I knew what I would find in there. I guess my brain had wanted my eyes to see it for themselves.

The door wasn't closed, just slightly ajar, as though it had been totally forgotten in the rush to get down to business. Clearly, the two hadn’t been expecting me to pop in during the middle of their afternoon rendezvous. And, sure enough, when I looked past the door, there they were! Jason had her bent over my bed, fucking her from behind. One of his hands gripped her hip hard—so hard that red fingerprints covered her hip and Jason's knuckles had gone white. His other hand was wrapped up in her bottle blonde hair, using it as leverage. He had it pulled taut as he slammed into her. Her blood-red nails dug into the sheets. My sheets! The ones that Jason and I had picked out together when we’d moved in the year before.

A laugh I’d thought had been forming in my head must have actually been forming in my throat because it slipped out before I’d even noticed that it was trying to force its way out. It was a laugh of pure irony—the irony being that I would have loved for Jason to be fucking me the way that he was fucking this slut, but I’d never had the balls to ask for it out loud. Sure, I’d asked in my head thousands of times during sex, but I’d never managed to get the words "Fuck me!" or "Own me!" to actually make it to my mouth. And now, he was finally fucking the way I wanted to be fucked, but it wasn’t me on the receiving end.

Hearing my escaped laugh, Jason stopped moving. As he turned his head, his eyes widened. He pulled out of his afternoon delight and turned his whole body toward me as he started to mutter his excuses.

"Ash, baby, this isn’t what it looks like. It isn’t what you think," he said.

Wow, that's all he's got? My brain to mouth filter, always painfully present and making it impossible to vocalize the things I wanted to say, must have taken a vacation at that moment because I heard myself say those words out loud.

"No, really babe. I swear I can explain." He was still completely naked, and so was the blonde, who didn’t seem at all bothered by me being there. Taking them both in, I noticed suddenly that the motherfucker also wasn’t wearing a condom. This reality of the situation hit me with full force at that moment. Un-fucking-believable! How long had this been going on and how many times had he slept with someone else and not even thought about using a condom? Oh my God! What if he’d given me something and I didn’t even know it? I was disgusted and nauseated all at once.

"Get out!" I yelled at the blonde, who was still not even trying to cover up her fake double-D’s— or any of the rest of her body for that matter. When she didn't move fast enough for my liking, I yelled again. "GET THE FUCK OUT!!! NOW!" Finally, she moved more like a dirty little whore who had been caught fucking someone else's man should move.

Jason, who was still stark naked, his dirty dick still exposed, moved toward me.

"You, too!" I barked at him. "GO! Follow your whore!" I pointed toward the door, in case he’d forgotten where it was.

"Ashley, please baby, let me explain. She's nothing. I swear!" Jason said. He still headed toward me, a little slower now, as though I were a caged animal he was unsure of. He should have been unsure of me because, at that moment, I was unsure of myself. I couldn’t decide which emotion was going to win the battle to the top, betrayal or disgust. The two vied inside my head, both fighting to get out. I couldn’t stand the sight of him, and apparently neither could my stomach. Nausea rolled in to play with the betrayal and disgust.

"Jason, come any closer to me right now, and I will rip off your cheating dick and shove it down your throat. Get the fuck out!" I screamed at him, more quietly this time. I don’t know if it could’ve even been considered a scream. My adrenaline wasn’t pumping as fast anymore, and my anger was slowly fading to hurt and embarrassment. I just wanted him out before I couldn’t keep it together any longer. So many emotions tumbling around inside one woman at one time isn’t a good thing. I was like an active volcano trying not to erupt.

"Fine, Ash! Fine! You know what? Fuck this." He turned to grab his pants off the floor. "This is all your fault anyway," he added as he pulled his pants on.

"My fault?" I scoffed. "How is it my fault that you were just fucking some slut in our bed in the middle of the afternoon?" I asked, truly baffled.

"If you weren't such a stuck-up prude, I wouldn’t have been bored and needed to bang someone else to feel satisfied." Jason spat the words at me viciously, as though he’d been inside my head and already knew my unspoken problem.

Oh, hell no. I wasn’t about to let him turn his betrayal around on me. He had no right.